The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans
The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans (ROCEEH; literally: The importance of culture for the early expansion of humans ) is an interdisciplinary research center of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . It is used by cultural scientists and natural scientists to examine in particular the contribution made by cultural achievements to the successful expansion of mankind . The research center is located at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen and at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt am Main .
The research center was established in 2008 by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and is projected to run for 20 years until 2027.
Research goals
background
Starting from Africa , at least two species of the genus Homo ( Homo erectus and Homo sapiens ) spread in several waves to Asia and Europe over the past two million years . Modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) were finally even able to colonize areas such as Australia , the sub-polar region and America that were untouched by representatives of the hominini . While the habitat of the australopithecines and early human forms was limited by natural ecological conditions, as with other animals , cultural achievements opened up additional ways of adapting to their environment for our ancestors in the course of human incarnation .
These considerations were based on the working hypothesis of the research carried out in the ROCEEH project, i.e. the assumption that the influence of environmental conditions decreases from early to later propagation waves, while the importance of cultural and technological innovations increases.
On the one hand, the project has set itself the goal of reconstructing the waves of propagation of the various hominin species, both in terms of their point in time and in terms of their direction and the associated effects on human tribal history . On the other hand, the expansion of the ecological environment and the expansion of the cultural capacities of the hominini living between three million and 20,000 years ago are to be reconstructed and the causes of these expansions analyzed and described. Particular attention should be paid to the development of human abilities for cultural action.
Researchers from the fields of paleoanthropology , paleoecology , paleobotany , geography and archeology are therefore involved .
Methods
A central part of the project is the interdisciplinary and web-based database ROAD (Roceeh Out of Africa Database) with geographic information system functions. It summarizes geographic data on sites with information on the stratigraphic structure of find layers and on archeology. In addition, information about important fossils , the climate , vegetation and animal world is collected in order to be able to reconstruct earlier habitats. The results are incorporated into a digital atlas of human-environment development based on geographical information systems .
organization
The ROCEEH research center is based at the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt am Main. The heads of the research center are Nicholas Conard and Volker Hochschild (Tübingen) and Volker Mosbrugger and Friedemann Schrenk (Frankfurt am Main). The chairman of the scientific commission is Hermann H. Hahn .
At irregular intervals the research center organizes workshops and symposia with international guests where new methods are developed and the latest developments and research results are presented and discussed.